Oh my: Al Gore bails on lecture at Copenhagen

posted at 8:19 pm on December 3, 2009 by Allahpundit

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that “great annoyance” was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore’s program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

“We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation,” said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

The ClimateDepot,com, an online news aggregator that tracks global-warming news reports, referred to the situation as “Nopenhagen,” and evidence that popular momentum for the Copenhagen conference “is fading.”

A fun story, but people are trying too hard to spin it as evidence that the Goracle’s lying low in light of Climategate. For one thing, I haven’t seen any report that he’s skipping the entire summit and its many, many photo ops. He’s skipping just this event. In fact, he may have dropped it in favor of a more high-profile gig:

Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider says the decision was made because of “all the events going on with the summit.” Dec. 16 is a key date for the meeting because that’s when the ministerial segment starts.

Beyond that, a guy who won a Peace Prize for becoming the high priest of this church simply isn’t going to turn on it this easily. The East Anglia boys will dump global warming — and each other, which they’re already doing — before Gore does. Nor do I think he’s ducking the lecture because he’s afraid to face questions about Climategate. Why should he be? He’s already got two pre-packaged “rebuttal” arguments to choose from, the savvy and the schmucky. Just today the UK’s climate secretary went the latter route by warning people not to be distracted from the crisis by skeptic “saboteurs.” That spin will be plenty good enough for a roomful of true believers, I’m sure. Exit question: Hotter ticket at Copenhagen, The One or Pope Al?

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OOOPs..Meant to add one of the emails that has been released. I meant Who did the email actually go to.

Here it is:

In the meantime, though, Osborn and his colleagues had already taken matters into their own hands. On May 29, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann, with the subject heading “IPCC & FOI”:

Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have with Keith re AR4? [“AR4″ is common shorthand for the U.N. IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which was released in 2007.] Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

It’s so…(sniff, sniff) sad. The High Priest of Eco – Wisdom, the Savior of Planet Earth, the Green Warrior, the Embodiment of Gaia, the Prophet of Our New World Order…will miss this golden opportunity to preach his message of: PAY UP SUCKAS – LINE UP TO WREAK YOUR ECONOMY – BOW DOWN TO MY HOCKEY STICK GRAPH AND SIGN YOUR FUTURE AWAY. This Entrepid Custodian of ALL THAT IS RIGHT AND GOOD has bagged the faithful. You can hear them now…sniveling…weeping…tapping the keys of their keyboards….frantically checking HuffPost, de Kos, and Democratic Underground…to “fact check” this dreadful piece of news. Yes…it is true…life as we know it IS BASICALLY OVER. Why? That paragon of the faith, Gordon Brown, told us we have 30 DAYS TO SAVE THE PLANET!!!!! But what about the polar bears that are dying of heat exposure?! What about the seas rising to unprecedented levels? What about the wars, the diseases, the economic devastation that is MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING? Who will stop it? Who will save the day? Who will snatch the human race from the very brink of the fires of hell itself? Al? Mr. Gore? Goracle baby? (yes you…the guy who was going to charge $1200 to each person who wanted to shake your hand) You must help. Help us Gorebaby One Kenobi you’re our only hope! Bwhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha!

I came across this idea in a letter to the editor at the WSJ today entitled “Feynman on Scientific Integrity”. The AGW “scientists” and adherents are engaged in Cargo Cult Science, a form of scientific conduct which Richard Feynman spoke of in his commencement address at Caltech in 1974:

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards.

For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn’t soak through food. Well, that’s true. It’s not dishonest; but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will — including Wesson oil. So it’s the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.

We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.

For “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” fans, the children of the airplane crash behaved as cargo cultists when they related the story of how they came to be marooned and their hope for rescue.

Since Al Gore’s AGW guru, the taxpayer funded science man turned AGW snake oil sale salesman, NASA’s James Hansen has declared the Copenhagen summit should fail, it may be difficult for the AGW shill, the frontman, Mr Gore to publicly support it. No doubt he will be working behind the scenes.

This just in, Squirrel flatulence the main cause of global climate change. In an concerted effort scientist around the world have reached the consensus that indeed, squirrels are a true danger to the planet’s health. Unfortunately, nobody is willing to target the squirrels existence without declaring it an indangered species which would outlaw the killing of the beasts reulting in a quagmire not seen since the climategate conspiracy.

It’s doubtful that all 3000 attendees were paying the $1200 for VIP tickets. That would be an awful lot of handshaking, even for a veteran pol like Gore. I’d bet most of the unwashed were only paying something like $50-100 per ticket.

P.S. Do you think that the “light snack” might have been a dish of crow?

This just in, Squirrel flatulence the main cause of global climate change. In an concerted effort scientist around the world have reached the consensus that indeed, squirrels are a true danger to the planet’s health. Unfortunately, nobody is willing to target the squirrels existence without declaring it an indangered species which would outlaw the killing of the beasts reulting in a quagmire not seen since the climategate conspiracy.

larvcom on December 4, 2009 at 9:03 AM

Wow someone could gather all the actual “research” that went into this stupidity and make a pretty fine book of sarcasm!

Cows were the problem!. Manure stinks so it must be killing the planet! Does that not sound like some of the theories from the middle ages?

Everyone with an issue jumped on this bandwagon to make their pet project all about global warming. What a waste of human ingenuity.

I wonder how many of the scientist who were part of the consensus of thousands, will now stand up and say, “I used the UEA-CRU falsified data to come to my conclusion. I now believe that it is wrong.” I hope they all leave Algore so he can go down in flames in his AGW ship.